Reading Experimental Writing

Description

Explores the challenges and significance of experimental writing Offers a forum for reflecting on the significance of avant-garde writing for the twenty-first century Explores the way in which contemporary experimental writers engage with socio-political issues Utilizes unpublished archive materials bringing to light a number of previously unpublished works Includes innovative readings of significant avant-garde writers previously neglected in the critical canon Bringing together internationally leading scholars whose work engages with the continued importance of literary experiment, this book takes up the question of 'reading' in the contemporary climate from culturally and linguistically diverse perspectives. New reading practices are both offered and traced in avant-garde writers across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including John Cage, Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, Erica Hunt, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Rosmarie Waldrop, Joan Retallack, M. NourbeSe Philip, Caroline Bergvall, Uljana Wolf, Samantha Gorman and Dave Jhave Johnston, among others. Exploring the socio-political significance of literary experiment, the book yields new critical approaches to reading avant-garde writing. List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: Reading Experimental Writing Chapter 1 ‘Fog is My Land’: A Citizenship of Mutual Estrangement in the Painted Books of Etel Adnan Chapter 2 Reading Happily with John Cage, Lyn Hejinian and Others Chapter 3 Experiment, Inscription and the Archive: Kathy Acker’s Manuscript Practice Chapter 4 Rereading Race and Commodity Form in Erica Hunt’s Piece Logic Chapter 5 Contemporary Experimental Translations and Translingual Poetics Chapter 6 On Joan Retallack’s Memnoir: Investigating ‘the Experience of Experiencing’ Chapter 7 A Queer Response to Caroline Bergvall’s Hyphenated Practice: Towards an Interdependent Model of Reading Chapter 8 Reading Language Art in Digital Media: Reconfigurations of Experimental Practices Chapter 9 Charles Bernstein’s Walter Benjamin, Among Other Things Notes on Contributors Bibliography Index